3 years of starting up
14 product ideas, 93% failure rate, and lots of personal growth
This week marks the third anniversary of leaving my full-time job to found a startup with my high school friend SK.
In the past three years, we built and launched 14 product ideas. Of which, only one (Pebblely) had significant traction.
Catche, your personal search engine for your bookmarks
Dashibase, a Notion-like internal tool builder
Alfie, an AI editor for content marketers
Pebblely, an AI product photo app
Pebblely Fashion, an AI model photo app
Vispunk, an AI-first Photoshop
Vispunk Visions, an AI image generator that matched Midjourney’s quality (back then)
Vispunk Motion, an AI video generator (there was also a video editor that we didn’t launch)
Magic Blocks, an LLM app for creating mini-LLM apps
Health screening recommendation app for Singaporeans
Health insurance AI assistant for Singapore’s MediShield and Integrated Shield Plans
Muse, an AI writing companion Chrome extension
Otaro, an open-source library for prompt optimization
Stores, an open-source library for agent tooling
Dewlap, an AI agent for office work (coming soon!)
We built several more but killed them before launching for various reasons.
Over the years, the way we start up has gradually changed from wanting to build any business to make money to learning to stop doing things we felt we “had” to do as a startup, to now working on our interests and doing things for fun. Along the way, I grew from a marketer to a jack of all trades: I can code frontends and simple Python backends, design websites and interfaces, come up with product ideas, handle bookkeeping and payroll, and create occasionally viral short-form videos. I’m still terrible at sales and business development, though.
We have not raised any money. Initially, we were burning through our savings until Pebblely’s little success gave us an income that has sustained us for a while and will for a little while more. Being bootstrapped has given us the freedom that I’m thankful for and that many of our VC-backed founder friends crave. But I would admit I sometimes envy their 10x larger business bank accounts. (We applied to YC thrice and interviewed twice but never got in.)
On the personal side, over the three years, I moved into a new house, had a kid, and took some time off to be with my aunt in her final days. Becoming a founder-dad wasn’t in my cards but perhaps I was subconsciously influenced by my own founder-dad. Having two babies—an actual human baby and a figurative startup baby—isn’t the easiest. But my wife has made it easier with her constant belief and support, delicious home-cooked dinners, and a stable job that eases any financial worries. I could be getting substantially larger paychecks if I had stayed in a job but she encourages me to pursue my dream of doing my own thing since I can.
Some friends said I’m their goal because my life looks great. Married, with a kid, an okay house, and a seemingly successful business. But that’s just from the outside. Without a doubt, I am grateful for all I have now and am enjoying most of my day-to-day. But if I could be greedy, I would love to get better at building products people love, develop my skills and craft further, and have more money in my bank account. Most of my agonies are self-inflicted, though: Why am I not better?
Would I do this again if I had the choice? Definitely. I might do some things differently (mostly around prioritization) but I would jump at the opportunity to try and build something impactful with SK any day. I have made many decisions in my life but only a few truly mattered; taking this leap was one of the few.